Corporators’ demands for freebies are on the rise, with members of the civic standing committee demanding bigger cars for committee chairpersons and an extended time period for their use, on Friday.

Corporators’ demands for freebies are on the rise, with members of the civic standing committee demanding bigger cars for committee chairpersons and an extended time period for their use, on Friday.

Meanwhile, the proposal to rent 25 Tata Indicas for ward-committee chairpersons and heads of all civic departments was passed by the civic standing committee on Friday. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will now have to bear expenses worth Rs. 2.42 crores for renting cars for a period of two years.

As per current statutory provisions, chairpersons of 16 ward committees along with chairpersons of the four statutory committees are entitled to a car each for their daily travel. They can use the cars for 12 hours every day for a distance of 100 km.

However, according to corporators their current entitlements were inadequate to meet the requirements of their job.

“A cap of 12 hours for the use of cars does not make sense. Emergencies often arise requiring car services of more than 12 hours,” said Dnyanraj Nikam, Congress group leader in the civic body. Demands to extend travel limits to the entire Mumbai Metropolitan Region were also raised.

“There are no fixed timings for our job. Given that we have to rush to places at odd hours for emergencies and accidents, the 12-hour cap is not appropriate,” said Geeta Yadav, chairperson, R-south ward committee.

In August, the civic standing committee made amendments to the civic budgetary provisions to include android phones for each corporator, instead of the current system of providing laptops. A resolution was also passed in July to increase the honourarium that is paid to corporators from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 25,000 per month.